We talk a great deal about the content framework Hero, Hub, Hygiene. This was introduced to us by Google and YouTube.

Imagine your website content as a triangle where the bottom or the base is the Hygiene content.  This is the stuff that is always on - who you are, what you do and how to contact you - brochure-ware.  

The middle is the hub - the dynamic piece of your website - regular expert led insights, commentary and newsletters etc. The hub content is always driving traffic to your site.

The top is the hero content big ticket events - research pieces, in depth market reports, surveys etc.  This hero thought leadership piece is a great way to establish and reinforce your reputation for expertise - especially if it is focused on an area/sector you want to 'own' as a firm. 

Why am I telling you all this?  Well on Wednesday I went to the PSMG Forum where the marketing and BD team from law firm Mills and Reeve shared their experience of producing a thought leadership piece called Full Scale Ahead- a perfect example of a hero piece of content. In his LinkedIn post Rob Neal, Communications manager at Mills and Reeve shares what they learnt.  

In summary Rob's advice:

• Think carefully about your timelines
• Create all your content up front
• Ensure you have strong backing internally
• Staff can help push content to a far wider audience
• Make your idea stretch
• Don’t underestimate how much of a change this is!

I particularly agreed with Rob's 4th point which is use your experts - in this case lawyers - to push your content to wider audience.  This can be done by sharing aspects of the Hero content in infographics and bite size chunks exactly what the team at Mills Reeve did.  Also you can drive people to your hero content by effectively creating hub content - expert insights and commentary that are about the same thing as your hero content.  These are easy to share on social and via newsletters and drive traffic to your hero content regularly throughout your campaign.